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On January 5th, Bangladesh held parliamentary elections that were marred by a widespread opposition party boycott and violence against supporters of Bangladesh’s governing Awami League and the country’s Hindu minority. The international community condemned the violence and has urged the Awami League to reach a political agreement with its main rival, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) so that new elections can be held to create a legitimate government. Thus far, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has shown little willingness to compromise with the opposition. Bangladesh has been one of the global economic success stories since 1990 and has successfully reduced levels of poverty through international trade agreements. However, the recent political violence could ruin the country’s international image, its economic progress, and make it a center for Islamic extremism.
This topic brief will provide an overview of the basics of Bangladeshi politics, discuss the January 5th vote and the controversies surrounding it, and then point out some issues that extempers should be aware of as they continue to read about Bangladesh’s political situation.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
The Basics of Bangladesh and its Politics
Bangladesh is located in South Asia and is neighbored by India to the north and west, Myanmar/Burma to the east, and the Bay of Bengal to the south. It was originally called East Pakistan and was part of Pakistan after the 1947 partition of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. However, racism within Pakistan toward the Muslim Bengali population, a poor Pakistani response to a cyclone that devastated Bangladesh in 1970, and the refusal to allow the Bangladeshi Awami League to take office after it won parliamentary elections in 1970 produced a 1971 civil war that is called the War of Liberation in Bangladesh. The war pitted Bengalis that favored remaining part of Pakistan against those who favored creating an independent nation and atrocities were committed throughout the conflict against Hindus in the area, as well as intellectuals and political activists which took the lives of up to three million people. By December 1971, Bangladesh won its independence with the help of Indian force, but its political history has been chaotic. In little over forty years, the country has seen two presidential assassinations and nineteen failed coups, as the Toronto Star points out on January 9th.
Extempers should understand that Bangladesh operates with a parliamentary system. It has a somewhat confusing structure of having both a president and a prime minister, but the President of Bangladesh is a ceremonial post that largely oversees a caretaker government at election time (more on this later). The President is selected by the Bangladeshi legislature every five years. The prime minister is in charge of the day-to-day affairs of governing the state through domestic and foreign policy and a sitting government must can serve a maximum term of five years. If the prime minister loses the confidence of the Bangladeshi parliament or no longer commands a majority, elections could be held in less than five years. The Bangladeshi parliament, called the Jatiyo Sangshad, is composed of 300 seats and all citizens that are over the age of eighteen have the right to vote.
The Christian Science Monitor of January 5th provides some basic information on Bangladesh. The country is the eighth most populous in the world with a population of 160 million people. 32% of Bangladeshis live in poverty, although this number has been falling since 1990, when 58% of the population lived below the poverty line. The country has experienced a great deal of economic growth over the last two decades on the strength of its garment industry, which is worth $21.5 billion in exports. The garment industry has also provided a way for women to be involved outside of the home, but extempers should not that the attraction of international corporations to Bangladesh is its cheap labor. The Toronto Star noted on January 10th that the government raised the minimum wage at the end of last year by 77% to $68 a month, which was an increase of $30. However, the negative side effect of this wage increase is that it is raising the cost of doing business in the country and could imperil the nation’s economic position relative to other competitors. In the short-term, though, that appears unlikely. The country’s shared borders with India to the west and the north are also home to large Hindu minorities, who have faced sectarian violence in recent years due to their support for Bangladesh’s existing government and land pressure. Bangladesh only occupies 148,000 square miles and Time on January 14th explains that land scarcity is a rising problem in the country. Bangladesh also occupies a floodplain, which makes it very vulnerable to cyclones from the Indian Ocean and in the Bay of Bengal. One of these disasters can destroy entire crops that the population depends on and thereby makes it dependent from time to time on international aid and assistance.
Bangladesh is a Muslim majority nation and what makes it unique in the world is that its top two political contenders are women. You will see these women referred to in the press as begums. A begum is a “Muslim woman of stature.” One of the major parties is the Awami League, which is the current governing party of Bangladesh, and it is led by Sheikh Hasina. The New York Times of January 11th explains that Hasina was the daughter of Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Her father later became prime minister and served between 1972-1975. As she studied abroad in 1975, a group of junior army officers drove a tank into her family’s home and murdered her father and her entire family, save for a sister that was with her in West Germany. The assassinations are a sore spot for Hasina, who has long felt that her political opponents played a role in the murders and some have felt that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) may have played a role in the murders as well. The Awami League is a secular party and champions the country’s secular constitution. Its goal is to modernize Bangladesh, promote economic development, and infuse the country with a sense of nationalism. In fact, the party emphasizes the need to combine democracy, secularism, socialism, and nationalism into a political platform. Hasina has governed the country as prime minister from 1996-2001 and from 2009-present.
The rival of the Awami League is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and it is led by Khaleda Zia. Zia, as The New York Times article previously cited explains, was the wife of Banlgadesh’s first military ruler, Ziaur Rahman, who was the country’s president from1977-1981 until he was assassinated by a group of army officers. Zia governed Bangladesh as prime minister from 1991-1996 and 2001-2006. The BNP is a more conservative party that emphasizes Islamic nationalism and how Bangladesh is a Muslim majority nation. However, this does not mean that they are a party of Islamic extremism. The BNP supports a moderate Islamic policy that promotes economic growth, but they are a socially conservative party that emphasizes Islamic principles. Due to their Islamic nationalist stance, the BNP has been close with Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), which is the largest Islamic party in the country. Controversially, JI opposed Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan in 1971. It seeks to make Bangladesh an Islamic state, institute sharia law, and form closer relations with Pakistan. JI has been implicated and blamed for attacks on Bangladesh’s religious minorities, which include Hindus and Christians, and its controversial nature has caused it to be banned from politics on several occasions on the grounds that its ideology is incompatible with the secular nature of Bangladesh’s constitution. In fact, for the latest parliamentary elections, JI was banned from contesting the vote.
Although it has been claimed that women leaders are less prone to engaging in violent policies than male leaders and this is one reason to elect them, Bangladesh is a counterpoint to that theory. Hasina and Zia do not get along and they have rarely engaged each other in negotiations since 2007. Both women have led very corrupt and somewhat autocratic regimes, with The Economist noting on January 3rd that one of Hasina’s family members saw their income increase 330 times since 2008, something that Hasina tried to keep out of the public eye. Despite their faults, both women remain very popular and hostility between them has risen because they are seeking to secure their political legacies. Both women are in their late sixties and as The New York Times cited earlier notes, they are hoping to pass their political parties into the hands of their sons. Both women have tried to use their electoral victories to consolidate their rule and make it harder for the opposition to win, seeing any victory for the opposition as a complete loss of power for themselves and their legacy. This is one of the reasons that political tensions in the country are so high.
The January 5th Vote and Election Violence
The big reason that the January 5th ended up being so controversial is that Hasina refused to appoint a caretaker government to oversee the polls. A caretaker government scenario sees the sitting government leave office ninety days before the scheduled vote. The President of Bangladesh appoints what is called the Chief Advisor, who occupies the role of prime minister, although the defense powers of the country are placed into the hands of the President. The Chief Advisor can be drawn from the recently retired Chief Justice of Bangladesh, a retired appellate judge, a citizen that meets satisfactory requirements, or, failing these options, the President can assume the role of Chief Advisor. After a Chief Advisor is named, the President then appoints other Advisors that are not running in the upcoming election, that are less than seventy-two years old, and are not affiliated with any political organization. The duties of this caretaker government are to organize and hold the upcoming elections and the reason that it is ideal is that it lets an impartial authority oversee elections instead of a sitting government, which may try to corrupt the elections or rig them in its favor.
The caretaker government requirement was added to the Bangladesh constitution after a disputed election in 1996 when, in an ironic situation relative to the current crisis, the Awami League boycotted the poll after the sitting BNP government under Zia refused to appoint a caretaker government to oversee elections that it said would be biased. The result of the elections and the Awami League boycott, as The Diplomat notes on January 7th, was that the BNP won all 300 parliamentary seats. The Awami League immediately took to the streets and launched hartals, which are blockades and general strikes that try to disrupt the national economy, to pressure the central government. To quell the instability, the military pressured the BNP government to call fresh elections under a caretaker government and in new elections held several months later, the Awami League won 146 seats and, with political allies in smaller parties, took power. The prevent the situation from happening again, parliament passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Bangladeshi Constitution to provide for a caretaker government in future elections.
However, shortly after it came to power in 2009 after a military-led government was forced to call new elections after trying to depose of the begums, the Awami League began to signal that when new elections were held under its watch they would not feature a caretaker government. Al Jazeera on January 7th explains that in 2011, Hasina and the Awami League secured passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Bangladeshi Constitution, which abolished the requirement for a caretaker government. This was a poor political move because, as The Economist points out on January 3rd, 80% of Bangladeshi supported the caretaker government arrangement. Hasina scrapped the move because allegedly she thinks that the caretaker government puts unelected people in power that could be a danger to the country. A more likely explanation, though, is that she wanted the power to oversee the vote, which experts said the BNP would likely win, assuming the election was fair.
Sensing problems and not wanting to legitimize a potentially corrupt poll, the BNP decided to announce a boycott of the election and twenty other parties joined them. On election day, only the Awami League and eleven other parties participated in the elections according to The Diplomat on January 8th. The result, as The Economist points out on January 11th was that 153 constituencies had no contested vote, since only the Awami League or an allied party candidate registered a candidate and only nine of twenty seats in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka actually had a contested race. The Diplomat of January 7th announced that the Awami League won 75% of the seats in the new parliament and had already secured 50% of the seats before the election occurred due to the uncontested races. If the BNP simply boycotted the vote they may have created sufficient sympathy for their cause, but evidence suggests that they, JI, and other allies also sought to suppress the vote to embarrass the government. The BBC on January 12th explains that more than 100 polling stations were set on fire on election day and The Los Angeles Times reported on January 6th that 120 people were killed in the lead-up to the vote when security services loyal to the government fired on opposition crowds that were blocking roads and attacking campaign and polling stations. The Guardian on January 15th adds that twenty-one people were killed as they went to vote and that the violence had a significant impact on turnout. The government announced after the poll that 40% of people participated, but The Los Angeles Times article previously cited explains that the Election Working Group, a non-partisan body that oversees elections in the country, estimates that only 30% of Bangladeshis cast ballots. The U.S. State Department announced shortly after the vote that it did not appear credible and The Wall Street Journal mentions on January 7th that it is urging the Bangladeshi government to work with opposition parties to resolve the political stalemate.
One of the more troubling aspects of the election violence was its sectarian nature. The Pew Research Center on January 14th announced that social hostilities due to religion reached a six-year high in 2012 and Bangladesh was one of the countries on the rise. The Diplomat of January 15th explains that JI has taken to attacking Hindu communities in the country’s northern and southwestern regions, which has had the effect of causing elements of these communities to flee to neighboring countries. This assists JI’s goal of turning Bangladesh into a monolithic Islamic state and The Diplomat mentions that in 1971 the country was 25% Hindu, but that number continues to fall in light of the attacks. Aside from the election, whereby Hindus are targeted by Islamic BNP advocated because of their tendency to vote for the secular Awami League, sectarian tensions have also risen due to the Awami League investigating war crimes from the 1971 War of Liberation and targeting the JI. The Guardian previously cited explains that after the war, a general amnesty was issued by Hasina’s father in 1973 to paper over the past and the atrocities that affected the country. However, the Awami League promised in 2009 polls that it would establish a tribunal to bring figures to justice that sided with Pakistan during the war and committed atrocities. After winning the vote, Hasina’s government created the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which regardless of its name is only participated in or sponsored by the Awami League, and amended the constitution to allow prosecutors to appeal life sentences to the country’s Supreme Court to get the death penalty for convicted criminals. The ICT has targeted the JI’s leadership and the panel convicted its leading member, Abdul Qader Mollah of killing six members of a family during the war. Mollah was sentenced to life imprisonment in February, but the government appealed the sentence under the new constitutional provisions and in September gave him a death sentence, which the Bangladeshi government followed through with in December. The Economist on December 13th was critical of Mollah’s conviction, which it attests was based on flimsy evidence and Newsweek concurred on January 11th by saying that Mollah was executed under retroactive legislation, that he had no appeal beyond the Supreme Court for his conviction, and that the ICT has been condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Commission of the Jurists. The action of the ICT have enraged conservative Muslims and JI members in Bangladesh and has exacerbated the secular-religious divide in the nation’s political system and indeed, some of the violence against the nation’s religious minorities in the run-up to the parliamentary election was fueled by the execution of Mollah as the JI took revenge on communities that supporting the Awami League.
Points to Consider for the Future
The first item of business that extempers should be monitoring is how the BNP’s tactics after the vote impact the Awami League. Will the Awami League be forced to cave after this dubious vote like the BNP was in 1996 or will it still govern the country for the next five years with the BNP shut out of the process altogether? For its part, the BNP has vowed to continue the hartals and make life miserable for the government. The danger for the Awami League is not so much the economic damage of the hartals, although that has to be considered, but is found in overreaching its authority in going after the BNP. Human Rights Watch on January 8th reported that before and after the vote, the Awami League has used its powers to imprison members of the opposition and those who have opposed its rule and indeed, Hasina’s inauguration speech pledged to contain the country’s violence with an “iron hand.” The Toronto Star on January 9th points out that four opposition leaders were arrested two days after the vote, which included one of Zia’s advisors. Zia has also been under house arrest and Mohmmad Hossain Ershad, a dictator that ruled Bangladesh from 1983-1990, was imprisoned at an army hospital after he refused to align his party, Jatiyo, which is the third largest in the country, with the Awami League before the polls were held. If the Awami League continues to imprison activists it could make the BNP appear as a persecuted political group and that could lead to significant international pressure on the Awami League to negotiate. Thus far, the League has only faced vocal condemnation from the international community for its tactics, but if they push too far it could imperil elements of the economy. For example, The Economist on January 11th explains that Bangladesh’s garment industry needs duty-free access to the European Union (EU), but this could be revoked if the Awami League’s tactics become too distasteful for the international community.
The international community has also looked at how the Bangladeshi army might respond to the political upheaval as it was the army that forced the BNP to hold a new poll after it won the 1996 polls without a caretaker government and it was the army that seized power in 2007 in an attempt to force both begums from the political system forever. If you are presented with a question on whether the Bangladeshi army might get involved in Bangladeshi politics again there are a couple of points you want to consider. First, the army’s caretaker government from 2007-2008 was a disaster and popular discontent forced it to allow elections to take place and both begums to reenter politics. It is uncertain whether the military wants to take on that role again or whether the public would tolerate such a situation. Even though the public liked the caretaker government that does not mean it would favor a military intervention because when the BNP signaled that it would not allow a caretaker government in 2007 and the army intervened it enjoyed a very brief honeymoon period. Second, the Awami League has done a good job keeping the military under its control. The Economist on January 11th reports that the Awami League has secured peacekeeping operations for the Bangladeshi military, which is significant because these operations typically pay higher wages than what the military makes in Pakistan. Also, the Awami League has reached agreements with Russia and China over new weapons and submarines, which are new toys for the military to play with. These payoffs, as well as its own poor record of governance six years ago, may prevent the military from playing its traditional role of intervening in Bangladeshi politics and thereby enable the Awami League to stay in power. Therefore, extempers should make sure to weigh these factors in future speeches on the subject.
There is also a question about the economic damage that could be done to Bangladesh in light of the current standoff. Sectarian violence is not what the Bangladeshi government needs and if the violence continues between religious groups and supporters of the Awami League and BNP then it could deter foreign investment. The Christian Science Monitor on January 5th reported that the garment industry suffered $3.8 billion in losses in December because foreign businesses cancelled orders. The hartals could choke economic growth, which was slowing prior to the violence, by making it harder for orders to reach the country’s ports and there are reports that the government is using police and the military to convoy shipments of products at night to avoid the opposition attacking them. The Christian Science Monitor of January 6th reveals that work has been reduced to just a handful of days in many areas of the country because of general strikes and this has harmed productivity in the nation’s garment industry. The Council on Foreign Relations on January 7th points out that Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest ready-made garment exporter, but that position could be imperiled if the violence continues over the long-term. Although it is difficult to relocate factories, that could be an option for international manufacturers, especially if the nation becomes a hotbed for Islamic terrorism in light of the government’s crackdown on JI.
It is clearly in the Awami League’s best interest to negotiate, but if you are discussing this in a speech it is important to know what the demand are. The BNP is unlikely to compromise on anything that does not involve a caretaker government. After all, it does not trust the Awami League to hold a fair poll and after the recent violence and arrests it is unlikely to allow Hasina to stay in power while the poll occurs. It will probably want international election monitors from the United States, United Nations, European Union, or the British Commonwealth of Nations to attend the poll as well. However, Hasina has shown no willingness to compromise on these issues thus far. The New York Times on January 5th explains that Hasina has signaled she might allow for early elections, but only if the BNP meets several pre-conditions: renouncing violence, ending its alliance with JI, and dropping the demand for a caretaker government. All of these demands are like asking the BNP to give up all of its leverage and elements of its ideology. The first demand about violence would be relatively fine for the BNP, although “violence” could be construed to mean hartals and in that case the BNP would lose its only leverage with the government since it boycotted the election. The second demand about the JI may alienate some of the BNP’s followers who believe in its Islamic nationalism ideology. And finally, the caretaker government demand will not satisfy the BNP’s major leaders. Therefore, any negotiation that takes place will have to navigate these issues, but the caretaker issue is the biggest one that will have to be settled. The Awami League can dig in its heels, but it is basically trying to run the clock, assuming that the international community will not sanction Bangladesh over its actions and that the country will turn against the BNP and JI’s tactics. Nevertheless, if it continues to act autocratic and the BNP can frame the Awami League as an enemy of democracy then it might have a chance at deposing the existing government and securing new elections by the end of 2014.